“Within the four walls of every classroom, souls are always found.”

Michel de SAINT-PIERRE (1916-1987)
Writer, journalist

“Don’t you see that we are moving towards a world deprived of culture? The game is not yet played out; but the peril is great. Alas, we must convince ourselves of this. In the interest of teaching the sciences and technology, we are progressively sacrificing everything else. Nothing is being done to promote true humanism, that is, the harmonious blossoming of knowledge. I insist it is about receiving true knowledge which brings wisdom, and not just about learning facts.
For there exists a gratuitous attitude, an openness of mind, which allows us to learn to know – instead of simply learning facts (however useful they may be). This disposition is necessary for children and very young people. It corresponds, in the intellectual realm, to the soul’s receptivity in the supernatural order, before its climb towards God…
And do you know how we learn to know? It is in learning how to express ourselves. For we will never make a culture with mathematics or the study of economy: this is against the nature of man. Much less would we be able to do so with any other science. Human culture is made with our maternal tongue which is its richest soil – in intimacy with our great literary gardeners; with a great respect for the civilizations which prepared ours: the Greeks and Latins.
Who today desires to proclaim this from the rooftops? And to demand a return to our sources which were so magnificently termed “the Humanities”? Our modern society no longer wants to know, but merely to do. This is why society is destroying itself…”

Michel de SAINT PIERRE (1916-1987)
Writer, journalist